Formosa Hut Daily

Taipei Times – archives

Dictionary wins praise

The online Mandarin Chinese dictionary compiled by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education is a powerful tool for foreign students learning Chinese, a senior Belgian journalist said on Thursday. Catherine Vuylsteke, the Asian page editor of the Belgian daily De Morgen, is now studying Chinese at Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University. Vuylsteke expressed her appreciation of the dictionary in an e-mail to the Taipei Representative Office in Belgium. The dictionary contains nearly 170,000 entries and has become the biggest Chinese dictionary data bank in the world, according to ministry officials. The dictionary allows input using the Zhuyin Fuhao (注音符號, commonly known as “bopomofo”) system, and provides definitions in Chinese. The dictionary can be found online at dict.revised.moe.edu.tw.

You can find the new on-line dictionary that is the subject of this story at http://citing.hohayan.net.tw/default.asp.

Vocabulary:

• 表示    biǎo shì    to express; to show; to say; to state; to indicate; to mean
• 原住民    yuán zhù mín    indigenous peoples; aborigine
• 編纂    biān zuǎn    compile
• 尤其是    yóu qí shì    especially; most of all; above all; in particular
  尤其    yóu qí    especially; particularly
• 參考    cān kǎo    consultation; reference; to consult; to refer
  參    cān    take part in; participate; join; attend; to join; unequal; varied; irregular; to counsel; uneven; not uniform; abbr. for 參議院|参议院 Senate, Upper House
• 恢復    huī fù    to reinstate; to resume; to restore; to recover; to regain; to rehabilitate
• 涵蓋    hán gài    to cover; to comprise; to include
• 部落    bù luò    tribe
• 平埔族    Píng pǔ zú    Pingpu or Pepo indigenous people; ethnic group (Taiwan), “plain tribes”
• 達悟族    Dá wù zú    Tao or Yami, one of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan
• 令人    lìng rén    to cause sb (to do); to make one (feel sth); (used in constructing words for feelings such as anger, surprise, sympathy etc)
• 大多數    dà duō shù    (great) majority

Taiwan News Online

e-dictionary preserves dying indigenous languages, cultures
原住民語言、文化瀕危 辭典E化好保存
By 中央社：編譯劉耀畬2010-06-02 00:00:00

An e-dictionary of the languages and cultures of Taiwan’s indigenous people has been compiled to help preserve indigenous mother tongues and collective memories that are quickly dying out, the Ministry of Education said Monday.
教育部三十一日表示，台灣原住民語言和文化的電子辭典已在編纂，以期保存正在迅速消亡中的原住民母語和集體記憶。

The MOE urged people, particularly Taiwan’s aborigines, to take advantage of the e-dictionary, which can be found on the Web site http: //citing.hohayan.net.tw/default.asp.
教育部呼籲民眾，尤其是台灣的原住民，善加利用電子辭典，這部辭典可在以下網站見到：http://citing.hohayan.net.tw/default.asp。

The ministry said the reference work would help users reinforce, learn or revive these dying languages and cultures before it is too late. It covers the mother tongues of 14 indigenous mountain tribes and the Pingpu plains (low-lying areas) aborigines.
教育部說，這部參考辭典可幫助使用者增強、學習或恢復這些瀕危語言和文化，以免為時過晚。辭典涵蓋了14個山區部落和平原部落（低地）平埔族的原住民母語。

The need for the e-dictionary on indigenous cultures was highlighted by the eye-opening visit to Taipei of a member of the Tao (Yami) tribe on Orchid Island.
對原住民文化的電子辭典的需要，因一名蘭嶼上的達悟族人造訪台北引起好奇而受到注意。

The Tao man, known as Chou Lung-fa in Chinese, was in Taipei to collect his prize money after winning a contest to quit smoking. But what shocked people had nothing to do with giving up cigarettes.
這位中文名字叫周龍發的達悟人，到台北來領取他參加戒菸比賽獲勝的獎金，但令人感到震驚的完全與戒煙無關。

Instead, in accepting the award, Chou spoke in the Tao language because he “didn’t know how to speak Mandarin Chinese,” a rare phenomenon at a time when most indigenous people in Taiwan, particularly younger generations, don’t speak their mother tongues.
而是他在受獎時，以達悟語發言，因為他「不知道怎麼說國語。」這在大多數台灣原住民，尤其是年輕一代，已不說自己母語的時候，是一個罕見的現象。

Taiwan’s indigenous languages, however, are dying out because of cultural assimilation, according to National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, which was one of the compilers of the e-dictionary.
不過，根據辭典編纂單位之一花蓮東華大學，台灣原住民語言正因文化同化現象而死亡中。